


Painstaking

by LitheLies



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, One Shot, POV Draco Malfoy, POV First Person, Short One Shot, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22613431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LitheLies/pseuds/LitheLies
Summary: The problem with pain that it isn't a singular feeling, but it both starts and ends with daisies.( Mild Dramione, Draco retrospective. )
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 20
Kudos: 63





	Painstaking

I'm four the first time pain was used to teach me a lesson.

It was my birthday, or shortly after that. I'd received a miniature riding broom with a limited levitation charm. Whether fault or luck on my part, I worked past the limitations.

And so I flew.

I flew high enough to touch the third story windows with the flat of my palm. I don't know if I lost my grip or if the broom failed, but I fell.

Blood ran warm across my face, through my eyes, and I thought I might have died. I screamed as if I had died. I was on the ground, head split open and Daisy by my side. She sobbed and wailed and whined until my parents sprinted over.

I didn't see Daisy after that. My mother said they let her go, they had to. She had failed, that I could have died. But each spring a circle of daisies sprung up in the back garden among white roses and lavender. And each year my father banished them with mild amusement. That same saccharine smile he had when an elf limped past or winced at his cane.

That lesson of pain, embedded bone-deep.

If he had killed her, it had to have been an accident. My father never killed elves outright. Perhaps he had been too cruel or exacting. Or perhaps he was tired, too busy to kill the elf over time as he would in the years to come.

...

I'm seven when I learn the pain of loss.

My snake died and I cried for a week. I cried over the little sad body I found curled up in his enclosure, blaming myself, blaming the elves. I had done everything right, I had fed him and cared for him and I had done everything right.

Things weren't meant to die if you took care of them.

My mother bought me three new snakes and I forgot my worries.

And then my grandmother died, and I asked if we could buy three new grandmothers.

It had been a joke, but that hadn't sat well with my mother, who cried as deeply about her mother as I had about my snake. I empathized. Both were cold-blooded, scaly and kept behind glass. So I touched my mother's knee and promised I'd make sure no one else died, so long as she wouldn't cry.

She gathered me into her arms and smoothed my hair, to explain that it was okay that things died sometimes, that it was just the nature of life. That everyone died eventually, that it couldn't be helped. But she promised to watch out for me if I watched out for her.

We agreed to let father look out for himself.

...

I'm nine when I learn the pain of rejection.

A girl moved into a nearby estate and my parents refused to introduce us. But we had so few neighbors and so I took it upon myself to fly over, to speak with her. I arrived and she screamed with excitement over the broom. She asked where I'd gotten it from and how it flew.

She had pretty brown eyes and a wide smile. She said her parents couldn't do magic but she thought she could. She waved her hands and pretended to move things. I pitied her, so I helped her with minor spells. I had learned to levitate things, and so I spun her dolls into the air.

It was impressive magic, after all.

I was only nine.

She shoved me so hard I fell over, to run and cry to her parents.

"He's a demon," she screamed.

By the time the Ministry arrived, my parents had already dealt with the family.

Obliverated beyond recognition. I think they were alive, but time does that to memories.

...

I'm ten when I feel the warm pit of inferiority.

Theo told me about his father, about how he had taught him how to torture toads and to pull apart butterflies. My mother didn't allow me to use Dark Arts, I was too young, she said. But Theo was younger than I was and he'd already mastered several spells. I watched him disembowel a toad with a flick of his wand, to string it up along a tree.

"It wasn't fair," I said.

"You don't need that sort of magic," said my mother.

It wasn't for discussion. Not until my father turned up to my room after midnight, to teach me several hexes to use on Theo. Nothing too Dark, but enough to ensure that he understood that the Malfoy name was above his.

"Pain is a useful tool," my father said in his rolling voice.

My father could talk Muggles into manacles, given the chance.

"And if you see that Potter boy," he said. "Show him how skilled you are. He's the one who killed the Dark Lord."

I would kill this Potter boy, if it meant I could have my father speak about me with such pride.

...

I'm twelve when I learn the pain of disappointment.

Not the sting of my own disappointment, that came later. A parental disappointment hurts deeper than screams or denied desserts. I was never punished as a child, I was coddled, swaddled and groomed. Everything I was, was because of my parents.

Which is when my failure became their failure.

We arrived home, limbs locked in the foyer as the Floo Powder sizzled behind us. The thin shake of my hands, the refusal to meet their eye. I had failed to secure top marks across the board. I was good, always good, but not good enough.

It wasn't their fault. They paid for the best tutors, two dedicated governesses, and a Quidditch coach. I was shaped for greatness and I had failed to fit. I hadn't tried hard enough, I hadn't done enough.

My father snapped my broom. My mother insisted he replace it. And buy several more, she said. Hogwarts has a terrible habit of giving its students second-rate supplies.

My father didn't speak to me for a week. Not unless you counted the sharp look of alarm when he saw me, the way his lip would curl. Mother told him to be understanding, and he settled for silence. I felt it in their weighted gaze as they had to explain I was second-best in all my classes.

Second, they said with lament in their throat, to a Mudblood. The school was too soft and their rules were too loose.

"Of course, we still love you Draco," my mother had said. "But do you really love us?"

The disappointment faded from their eyes in time. I was their only child and their prized heir. They were too soft to sustain cruelty and I was too much of a brat to endure it.

Their focus turned to the Mudblood, who had cheated. She must have. My parents agreed.

Pity, or cheating, or both.

...

I'm twelve when I learn that embarrassment can hurt.

Embarrassment is a unique pain. It isn't sharp on the outside like an insult or an attack. All it took was clumsy words or a misstep to wash hot blood across your face. But embarrassment tore through me as the Mudblood, the cheating, pitied Mudblood, had the suggested that my skills in Quidditch weren't enough to secure my position on the team.

I can't help but watch her with rapt attention in flying classes. My eager eyes chase her as she fell, and fell, and failed to try after that. I memorized the look of terror on her face, the shape of her eyes and lips, terrified, and hoped I could see that in her again. She had never tried to fly a broom and she'd never even heard of Quidditch before school.

She had no place to comment.

And so I used pain as it had been used on me; to educate and refine her, so she might learn her place. I could have struck her or turned her on her head. I could have done far worse.

My laughter became painful as Weasley barfed slugs and she stared with wide brown eyes as the first person in the Wizarding world helped her find her place.

Indignant but not surprised.

Stupid Mudblood.

...

I'm thirteen the first time I'm slapped.

It's a stinging pain that mixed embarrassment and aches into one. I'm stuck between surprised and relieved with her handprint across my cheek. I worried about her, when she'd touch me, were she ever to try.

I couldn't stand the thought, that first touch, the idea she might reach to hand me something or catch my sleeve for my attention. Any attempt at softness from her made my heart ache as if she might pass on her curse of pity. The way that people spoke about her, they had to pity her. She's so smart. She's so clever.

I avoided her in truth, she was contagious, a sickness everyone endured.

She was the clever Mudblood surrounded by gold. Blaise often said that Gryffindor colors were pus and blood. We laughed about it, once or twice, their house a badge of infected wounds and bloody noses.

Gold, what a stupid color to be proud of.

And then she touched me, red hot cheek splayed by the flat of her palm, her stupid Mudblood methods, so bestial, so baseless. Were it Weasley or Potter I would have slapped her back, thrown her to the ground and choked her until her face was as red as mine. Watched those terror-wide eyes and her mouth form around a cry.

Like she was falling from a broomstick and she wanted to live.

But I'm above such violence.

My face ached from physical pain, the hot red mark drawn in the shape of slim fingers. She picked through books and delved into parchments. She was shaped for the library and for soft cushions, meant to study and to be studied.

Those hands aren't meant for violence yet I had been relieved of that misconception. I won't look at her for the rest of the semester, not as she laughs and smiles and lives. She's so stupid in that way, so pleased with her misshapen face and awful hair. She had nothing to be proud of, not unless you counted her mouth thick full of information that no one had asked for.

I should have strangled her, done everyone a favor.

But the pain deepened, past my cheek. It hadn't hurt that much, in truth. I had fallen from the broom and ached worse. This was a new pain, one where I feel the shape of her. The soft red shape of her, fading into pale white.

How can she be so happy in a world that hates her?

...

I'm fourteen when I learned that it hurt to want unobtainable things.

It was somehow worse than the rest of my pain, as it struck a spot low in my chest like I had been kicked. I could have anything I pointed to and the charisma to secure that which couldn't be bought. But I had an ache in my chest over a plan, a future, where I could exact slow revenge.

Revenge like this cannot be bought.

It was an idea I tossed around while bored one day in the Library. I had seen the Mudblood and Krum rush off for the Herbology section with disgust.

But it gave me the idea.

I had to become England's Seeker. That was the first step, arguably the most difficult. But once I secured the spot, I'd invite the Mudblood to my first game, front row seats. I'd let her bring her parents, if she liked, all the better to embarrass her with.

I'd make a show of it, shower her in gifts and food and make it seem like I had changed my ways. Anything to soften her, so she doesn't expect it.

I'd snatch the Snitch and fly to her, to throw it at her.

I'd say, who's bought their spot on the team now? Or something witty. I had time to work that part out. 

In any case, she'd have to confess that I was an excellent flyer, the best that she'd seen, and I'd laugh in her face. And her hair would frizz and her face would turn red and I'd relish the sight of her being wrong.

I don't look to the Herbology section as I leave, I don't bother. I don't need to look, I can hear the rustle of robes and the sound of wet on wet. I shrivel inside, sickened at the thought.

And I look, at the last second, and I wished that I hadn't.

I see her, wrapped around Krum, seeker for Bulgaria and thicker than concrete.

This is a new pain.

Disgust that ran so deep I felt it in my bones. Life is strange in that way, you believe you have suffered as much as you ever will, that everything is as awful as it possibly can get, and then it gets worse. I scrap the plan to become England's Seeker, I don't want to be like Krum or Potter, wrapped around the Mudblood's fingers like yarn, her stupid wide mouth full of something like honey, for how Krum lost himself in it.

It's worse at the Yule Ball. That disgust burns deep, low in my throat.

How can he slum with someone so bookish and insufferable, someone so dedicated to being unappealing, who looked as if she'd flirted with lightning and lost?

But the Yule Ball is so, so much worse.

Because she's none of that.

I don't recognize her, not at first.

I thought she hadn't come at all, and that Krum had swept up another girl in his loneliness. My nails bite into my palm as I watch him twirl and swirl an unfamiliar girl, slick hair, fine smile, pretty eyes, gorgeous -- and her.

The Mudblood.

I swallow the thoughts back up because it's relative. She's beautiful for a Mudblood. She's pretty for a swot. She isn't pretty per se but compared to the tragic thing she roamed around as, big hair, big voice, big ego, she's --

I don't recognize her, not even now.

I look at her for the rest of the night, but only when she laughed. If it hurt enough I could kill the impulse to walk over, to pry apart her lips and check her teeth for those awful stupid fangs she'd had before. I could run my hands through her hair until it swirled and curled back into her reality when she wasn't so much unlike herself.

I'd tear her apart to find the girl beneath the slick hair and powdered skin, thick lashes ran black around the shape of my chest.

The pain is worse if I look at her, but nothing hurts as much as turning away.

Laughter, at nothing, at the world-class Seeker.

...

I'm fifteen when jealousy turned to acid in my veins.

Dumbledore's Army.

The coins.

Her.

That stupid Mudblood.

Umbridge is vile in a way she must be jealous of. The way Umbridge has to be involved in everything, in every little thing, but not so much as the Mudblood. Not as she enchanted coins and find a magical room that gives all that you desire.

No one is smart enough to work this out. No one is stupid enough to try.

Except her, that stupid Mudblood.

I square my jaw with reluctant laughter as I watch her struggle against Crabbe. It's better this way, the distance, it affords a better vantage to watch her suffer. The same terror-wide eyes and popped open mouth as she had in flying lessons. Her tells haven't changed since First year, I want to tell her but that'd be telling.

So I watch her instead, the proud tilt to her chin, her nasty gaze, how she picked and picked and picked and she worked it out -- the room fell to tatters after she left with Umbridge and Harry, I was furious, furious at her, at my so-called friends, but never as furious as I got with her.

My father, in the papers.

My father, in Azkaban.

Potter got to be right. He got the summers with the Weasleys and with the Mudblood.

I got home to my mother in tatters, her hands shaken and her mind melted. She wasn't all gone, but she screamed and cried until she did neither. I preferred when she screamed, when she cried, for at least it was something. A response, a reaction, proof that she understood the monster who had moved in, in the place of my father.

I feel the acid in my veins as the Dark Lord poured his blood and ash and bones into my flesh, flashes of green and skulls scraped against snakes, I feel it when I don't want to feel it, an ache, and now all I hear is my mother screaming, even when she's quiet.

I have no time to mourn my father or my family name, the pain is lingering and immediate. I slapped Pansy by mistake when she touched my arm, almost choked her.

But she's too ready to love and I'm empty enough to permit it.

...

I'm sixteen when I find the newest slice of pain, where apathy met desperation. 

The Mudblood touched my forearm after Potions, her chin dipped and her eyes wide.

I flinched and she knew.

The way her gaze dipped and she slid notes to me, patient as I refused to take them until she slipped them into my languid hand.

"You didn't take any notes," she said. "If you need help with classes, just let me know."

I hadn't ever noticed her eyes were brown, and it's worse, knowing that. A further shape to her that I never asked for. I tore up the notes as I stared her dead in the eye, a practiced sneer drawn across numb lips.

The Dark Lord would check in the summer, to see what I'd done.

"Fuck off Mudblood," I said. "I don't need your pity."

She's too smart for that.

I avoid her as a rule, as I avoid Potter.

He's going to kill me, and worse than that, he'll kill them. I can't wear deaths like diamonds around my fingers. I refuse to add to the laundry list, or to adorn myself with the skulls of my enemies. The one in black ink that clung to my forearm was enough.

I can only wear so many deaths before they wear me.

...

I'm seventeen when I learn that it's sometimes better to be in pain than to see others in pain.

It's a lesson I learn as I watch a professor die across a table. A lesson that deepens as the Dark Lord punishes those who fail to perform. A lesson I forget as he tortured me for something I cannot even recall, a look perhaps, a roll of my eyes.

But the lesson of suffering stuck as my mother shatters her favorite tea set when she wasn't quick enough. Scalding tea dropped across pale fingers, she doesn't cry anymore. I don't know if her hands can feel it any longer, the heat of the water or the strike of the spell. It's a natural response to scream and cry when her body seized, but she doesn't feel it anymore. That's what she said as she stroked my hair from my eyes with clumsy fingers.

She touched the scar from when I was four when Daisy let me drop from my broom.

I don't know which is better; for her to no longer feel it, or for her to be able to lie to me with such proficiency.

Potter arrived with Weasley and the Mudblood. I don't have to look at all three to know, to know that in the end, they have each other, in a way I cannot fathom. That acid jealousy rose in me when I saw Weasley sidled up to the Mudblood, even in the dirty dreary darkness of war, they shine.

They shine like pus and blood, war heroes before they've even won.

I don't look at them for long. I can't. I could never.

Not all of last year, not now.

But then I have to look at her, to watch her fear wide eyes and open mouth like she was falling off a broomstick. But in all the times I pictured her, hurt and scared, I never thought of how she'd sound. Not the desperate screams nor the smell of copper in the air, not as she bleeds out her name across her arm.

Mudblood.

It is her name, to me. Always had been.

It's too easy to pretend I don't know her name.

I never use it; it's too much like intimacy to start now.

The pain dug deeper into my chest, my mother's nails in my arm, the Mudblood's screams in my ears.

...

I'm eighteen when I feel the pain that light can bring.

Azkaban is dark, darker than even the Manor during the Dark Lord's stay.

So bright I don't see her. I see the halo of her, on the stand, her chin lifted and her wide brown eyes turned to the panel of judges. My mother had been excused by default, for her lack of a mark and on Potter's word. That was all I wanted, all I expected, and so I laid in my cell at Azkaban with manacles around more than my wrists.

I didn't think of Quidditch or politics or school.

I can't even say what I thought about now. It's a blur, one I must have suppressed. But the pain returns, at the cracks in her voice.

"It wasn't his fault," she said. "He was young, he had no choice."

I strain my eyes with how hard I roll them. I want to speak but they've enchanted the cage. All I can do is listen and ache and pray that they let me return to my cell. At least the darkness is familiar now, a place I can lament in solitude. I stopped shaking last week. This will only hurt more when she put me back in there.

But I can't say that.

I have to listen to her teary, crackly voice as she slapped down her notes.

I strain my eyes a second time.

Of course, I'm her book report.

They pull her apart, again and again. They probe her for sympathies she doesn't have. They ask her why she'd want to defend someone who wanted her dead, who worked towards her death.

"If he wanted me dead, he would have done it already," she said. "He could have told them my name, could have summoned Voldemort, but he didn't."

I don't know how to tell her cowardice and inaction do not turn into bravery; alchemy doesn't work that way.

"What do you see in him," they ask her.

"A future," she says.

I turn my head so sharply I strain a muscle.

...

I'm nineteen when I feel the pain of manual labor.

For a man my age, you'd think I'd have lifted boxes the Muggle way, but no. I moved to Hogsmeade to make room for the refurbishment at the Manor. Mother couldn't stand the sight of it, and it had been ruined in our time away from it. People didn't care for our family or how we'd all escaped from Azkaban.

But her hand against my neck catches my attention.

"I could have hovered them for you," she said.

I'll be allowed a wand again in two years. Limited magic is permitted, but anything stronger than a healing charm or a light charm counts as a punishable offense.

"I can carry a few boxes, Granger," I said. I try to sound proud but it's pathetic.

"I agreed to help you move," she said. "How am I meant to help if you won't let me do anything?"

We shared mulled wine by the fireplace and she poured stories into the open air. I don't speak for an hour and she speaks for years, all wrapped around a clumsy tongue.

I let her have the bed I'd set up.

I wake to muscle pain and a hangover.

I see her hand, draped over the bed. She smells of daisies and vanilla.

The scar on her forearm, exposed by how her sleeve rode up.

I tug at it, to cover it, and she woke with a scream.

I meet her eye and she won't meet mine. I imagine they're teary, fear-wide and red. I feel the empty air, where we're meant to talk, to talk about it, but I don't. I laugh and ask if she had a nightmare.

She left quiet and I was back in the drawing-room, her blood on my hardwood floors.

The quiet is worse than the screams.

...

I'm twenty when I find out what it feels like to break bones.

I had broken them before, in truth, but they had been fixed and fine.

But I had to sit on the back of my couch and let Granger tend to them, as my wand hand had been the one I'd struck Weasley with.

I watched her fuss and coo and mumble at me, something about it being fine. Except she was crying, profusely and effusively. 

"I'm fine," I said. Because I was, with her in my grasp.

"He was drunk," she exhales. "He thought she was me, they kissed because he thought -- "

And I cut her off because she's so stupid. I let her fix my hand but I don't let her have space. I kiss her, once, simple, soft.

"I must be drunk," I said against her lips.

"To want to kiss me?" she asked, a heavy weight in her gaze.

I frown at her because she took it the wrong way. I want to grab her, to yank her close and to show her, to shake her until she understood, but I can't. I'm not meant for kindness and she's not meant to be coddled.

"You shouldn't have punched him Draco," she says, and it's the first time she's ever said my name.

And she left again, quiet as she had been last time she'd stormed out.

My hand was still broken. 

I let her go.

My index finger didn't bend right after that. She pretended not to notice.

...

I'm twenty-one when that curl of jealousy turns into a beast beneath my heart.

Granger's a beautiful bride. Of course, she is. She's gorgeous at everything she does, a perfect duelist, a doting friend, an incurable pessimist with a slash of hope for balance. She's awful to be around, an absolute force of nature that I have never been able to decipher. And she hasn't left me alone, hasn't given me a chance to relax, not since she moved closer.

She kept her hair loose and curled and her dress is pale blue. Not pure white, she didn't like how it looked. 

She performed a clever charm that made small butterflies go around her head. I have no idea why.

"Ginny said it was a cute idea -- is it too much?" she asked.

"Perhaps," I said, distracted by my cuff.

She hasn't got many friends. Which made her friendship stranger, given how she was so selective. But I've apologized hand over heart, head over heels, I picked apart our years together, I told her --

I told her enough.

Not everything.

She touched the small scar on my forehead, from where I cracked it open.

You must be mad that your scar isn't nearly as well-known, she'd joked.

I roll my eyes and shake my hair over my face. 

I offered her my arm because her parents died in Australia. I helped her search and stopped her before she found out too much. She didn't need to know that Fenrir Greyback tracked them down as a personal point of pride. She just thinks they're happy somewhere in Australia.

But I walk her down the aisle, because what else can one do for a friend.

Weasley -- Ron, the stupid tall one -- I spent too much time with my hatred of Potter.

I should have been hating him.

And I did. As he took her hand and teared up and brushed her hair from her eyes and she stood in this rickety house with brown walls and red hair all around, as he promised the impossible and took everything from me.

And I clapped and I smiled and I left first.

But she can't let me leave. Not so soon, not so simple. It isn't in her nature to allow me freedom without a price.

"Thank you," she said as she kissed me on the cheek goodbye.

"For what Granger?" I have to ask.

"Weasley you mean," she laughed.

I laughed until it was enough to justify the gloss of my eyes.

I laugh because what else is there to do.

"I wanted to say thank you for proving me right," she said. "I always knew there would be a future for you."

She saw a future in me; not a future with me.

...

I'm twenty-two when I realize that pain can be fun when it isn't your own.

I see it in her eyes when she turned up late to the pub. I brought a date, some-such-or-another, I've forgotten her name.

But I'll never forget how Granger snapped the handle off her glass of butterbeer. She never did things by halves, her cheeks red and her eyes on fire. She complained when I was single and complained when I dated.

I had gone out for a cigarette and she'd followed. She hated how I smoked but her hatred of some-such-or-another trumped that.

But then she grabbed my wrist and drew the cigarette to her lips -- and coughed, because she didn't smoke.

"I've always wondered what it tastes like," she said.

"You should have asked," I say, a smirk.

I touched her jaw and tilted her head, but she shivered too much and I pulled back. She's was crying, more than usual. She always cries when she drinks. But this was far worse.

She shoved my hand away and ran.

I saw some-such-or-another leave. I chase Granger by instinct.

I found her in the bathroom, crying, about marriage, about her future, about how there had to be more to life, about so much.

I stayed quiet, not sure I was meant to weigh in.

She kissed me.

Deeply, wholly, and I let it happen. I tasted the smoke on her lips and the butterbeer on her tongue. She still smells of daisies, warm in the heat of the pub.

...

I was twenty-three when a papercut cut through me worse than a Cruciatus curse.

I'm at the Ministry between cases and she's come in to file some papers. I agreed to escort her as people avoided me to the same magnitude they flocked to her. I balanced her image, whether that was a good thing or not.

But I kept my hand at the small of her back and a faint smile on my lips.

I don't smile much, except when I'm with her.

"I'm suing you for damages," I flexed my cut, crooked index finger. "That's twice you've forsaken me."

"Don't complain," she scoffed. Her hands are riddled with paper cuts.

As an Auror, I've had my chest crunched and my head collapsed, and yet a paper cut lingers in my mind.

"I can't believe they misspelled my name on her birth certificate, can you?" She looked to me as if she expected me to agree with her.

"A crime," I deadpaned as she cradled the baby girl in her arms. Her hair is the Weasley portion, but otherwise, she's Granger. From the petulant stare to the wide mouth wrapped around her pudgy fist.

I wanted to hate the little girl, but I can't. She's too much of her mother, the wide brown eyes.

"Hermioney Wezebel," she scoffs again as the little girl wails.

"Almost as ridiculous as Hermione Weasley."

She doesn't laugh.

...

I was twenty-four when I lose myself to pain.

I worked harder than they asked. I took on more assignments than others, I pushed myself into the Dark Arts, I pushed and pushed, and I live in this space.

I pick through my father's old contacts and I hunt down the men who tortured my mother. I mark off the list until it's a series of straight lines.

And then I come home to Granger, tired eyes and a suitcase.

She means it this time.

She's done with him. 

She's tired.

I'm tired too, so it's easy to believe the lie. I lose myself in it, the few hours between fights, before she gets back to her right mind. Because I'm not the sort of thing one resorts to as a first choice, and I've accepted that.

My wife is asleep in some section of the manor. She has her own wing, decorated to her tastes. My mother hates it, won't stop complaining. My wife loves daisies, she strings them through the house. I could go find her, to make sure she's asleep, but the house is so large. In truth, I don't care to find out. I don't care if she finds us, I hope that she does. It might be less of a vigil in the dark and instead of a confession, something to push us past this broken shape. Those terror wide eyes and wide-open mouth as my hands find her throat, then her cunt.

I find her, lips to her throat, the thrum of anger beneath pale flesh, she's screaming about him, until it's about me.

It works for now, as I claw through the exhaustion and the misery until she sparks, bright and light.

She'll be back to him by the end of the week.

...

I'm twenty-five when I stop thinking about pain.

"It's best if we stop seeing each other," she added with a nod.

I smile.

She looked as mad as I've ever seen her.

"You were wrong about something for once," I say.

Her anger faded for confusion.

"You said you saw a future in me," I smiled.

"I said I saw a future in you, not with you," she said with a dip in her voice.

I'm not sure how pain could dig so deep when she walked away featherlight. She was absolved and I was back to the darkness she'd dragged me from.

I see blood and smell daisies. At a certain point, you have to become numb to pain.

You have to.

...

At twenty-six I found that pain is relative.

A scale, as it were.

(I would laugh at the notions of scales and snakes later when she isn't in my arms.)

Instead, I watch her sleep. She has her hair gathered up in loose, long tendrils, the sort of hair she complained about, the sort she said she'd cut and crop and tear out if it wouldn't sit right.

It always sat right, as she never did anything wrong.

A bias, perhaps, but love makes one blind.

I hadn't realized I'd reached out to touch her face until her cheek warms my palm. I smile, as pain blooms. I learned in that moment that everything is neutral, morally speaking. Acts are just acting, feelings are just feelings.

"Stop staring at me," she hummed between pink crushed lips. I feel half-terrible for that, but it had been so long since I'd kissed her.

And so I kiss her, again, and again, because each time I watched her walk away had been the taste of death.

Sleep-ridden eyes crack apart and I see brown eyes beneath brown lashes, brown freckles around brown curls. She's warm and bright and doesn't suit the mansion and that's why I love her, for how she sits in it like a prized feature.

That's the morning I tell her why there are daisies in the back garden. We watch Rose play in them. We agree not to tell Rose about Daisy's daisies. But as Rose toys in them, they bloom brighter and lighter as if the elf beneath the dirt can sense a duty to be fulfilled.

Rose sprinted over, her thumb cut on a rose because in the midst of lavender and roses and daisies, she's found the one thorn to catch herself on.

But she climbs into my arms and cries into my throat and I taste the anger my parents had wallowed in.

But we keep the roses as Rose loves the roses.

Instead, we teach her that some things are better to leave planted, to watch grow and to think back on them. Not everything beautiful has to be held. Sometimes it needs to just be left to grow.

I learn that pain is important, for how it shapes your world. Lessons and morals and a deep sense of duty, I thrive in pain so they don't have to.

Hermione pressed into us, a trio in the garden, her fingers bare of rings and our matched forearm scars.

Not the same, but mirrored.

Until there are rings, mirrored and matched.

She picked them. Of course, she did.

Daisies etched into the sides, wound with roses. Simple, no gems; silver and gold.

"It's ridiculous isn't it," she says. "That people don't mix gold and silver more."

**Author's Note:**

> This is very outside of my wheelhouse but I had an idea for it -- let me know what you think!
> 
> I CHANGED THE ENDING BECAUSE -- it felt like it needed something.


End file.
